


The Blesing of Hestia

by willsolacepositivity



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: aka charecterization is hard, and explains why Cabin NIne didn't freak out when Leo revealed he was a fire user, arrrggggghh, minor pjo charecters, so it follows the same theme as wish upon a star, this also reveals some details about fire users I've been thinking about, this is the sequel to/continuation of wish upon a star, umm yeah, which is giving sideliners more developed personalities and finding out the mechanics of Camp more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willsolacepositivity/pseuds/willsolacepositivity
Summary: Three newbies had just left on a dangerous quest, which left Drew, who was just trying to help, Connor and Travis Stoll (wo may need each other more than they think), Will, who everyone can see is overworking himself, and Nyssa, who was charged with Cabin Nine as a side gig before finding out that no one really knows all of its secrets. And things really begin to go sour when the girl who is always tending to the fire goes missing.(a continuation of my oneshot Wish Upon A Star)
Kudos: 9





	The Blesing of Hestia

**Author's Note:**

> And here it is! These chapters will take a lot longer to write than my normal ones because Wish Upon A Star is a study on characterization and I want to keep that up! This chapter is basically All About Travis time with some Nyssa and even a little glimpse of Connor. I might even be nitpicky with editing this chapter later who knows

“Welcome to the Hermes cabin!” Travis said. “Do you know your specialty yet?”

“Huh?” The new kid tilted- Travis frowned at the pronoun button- their head in confusion. Stupid Connor had hidden his contacts again. 

“You know- the aspect of Hermes’s being you embody. Connor got travelers, so he can run really fast for a pretty long time, I can understand most languages on sight, we’re both pretty good pickpockets.” At this, he held up the newbie’s shoelaces. 

“What the-” They looked down at their shoes. “How the fuck did you do that?”

“You’ll learn soon enough. Through practice, mostly.” Travis tossed the shoelaces back. “Now, you say you got claimed by Hermes already? Standard George and Martha on the staff?”

“There was a staff, yeah. Um, I’m Darren, by the way.”

“I know.” Travis said. He didn’t, but half being a cabin head was knowing how to bullshit your way through life. “So,  _ have _ you found your specialty yet?”

“No, not yet. Maybe it’ll take a while.” Darren shrugged.

“All right, then. I’ve got to go teach the traps in combat class, so hang around I guess? This is definitely the lax cabin.” Travis shrugged. “Anyways, see you around!” He turned and sprinted off towards the training grounds. 

For once, “I have to go teach a class” wasn’t an excuse. Travis really did have to teach Traps in Combat, and his co-teacher was none other than Nyssa.

“Hey, Nys!” Travis said as he jogged up to Nyssa who was standing in Training Ground Four with her arms crossed, scowling. She was wearing her purple bandanna that Lou Ellen Blackstone had charmed to be self-cleaning and- Travis’s least favorite charm- pickpocket-proof. Travis knew he didn’t need to swipe stuff, but it was one of the few fun things to do at Camp. Or maybe a Hermes thing? It had messed his life up enough, though, so he was a bit glad that Nyssa had come prepared. And she looked majorly pissed. 

“I just got my face covered in micro-arrows from the mosquito killer.”

“Micro-arrows, huh?” Travis smiled. “Were you getting your eyebrows done? Finally seeking professional help for those caterpillars?”

“Shut up, Travis.” She walked over to the weapons rack and began unfurling a special type of Celestial bronze barbed rope. 

“Oh, I will  _ never  _ let you live your Sharpie-brows phase down.” Travis grinned. 

“I will crush you like a mite.” Nyssa said, but Travis could see her smiling. Travis and Nyssa had been co-teaching the traps in combat class for two years now, and there’s a certain type of friendship that came with teaching twenty-odd half-bloods the intricacies of barbed wire. 

“So any cabin news?” Nyssa said while Travis started wheeling the racks of spring-activated arrows to their spots. 

“Nothing much. New camper, standard ‘i can’t-believe-this-is-happening’ deal. Someone stole all the pillowcases again, but I don’t care enough to bring it up, you?”

“Most of the same. Dumb curse and all that. We’ve got a newbie too, quest guy Leo. I’d say nothing new, but he seemed… weird. Ouch!” She said as a mechanic’s hammer flew off her belt and onto her toe. “Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, Leo.”

“My brother knows all the hospital gossip for some reason, and he says that when Will was giving him the tour Leo didn’t seem surprised. You know as well as I do that people’s reactions can be pretty colorful, but Leo just took it like he ate Greek gods for lunch. That’s all Connor-said Will-said, though, so don’t quote me.”

“Hmmmm. Somehow, I believe that. And the way he asked me, ‘aren’t you fireproof?’ I don’t know but…”

Travis laughed. “You seriously don’t think that he’s a fire user?” Nyssa  _ had  _ to be joking. Sure, Leo was a bit odd, but this was Camp Half-Blood! Travis himself could understand most languages on sight and had dual-wield daggers into war at age fifteen; he ate  _ odd  _ for breakfast. 

“The way he said, it, it almost came out like, ‘aren’t you fireproof too?’” 

“Nyssa, the curse is making you see ill omens and murderous fire-users everywhere. Besides, aren’t fire users supposed to be forces of chaos and destruction?”

“What was that?” Travis turned around to notice one of the students walking towards him.

“Oh, nothing.” He brushed it away. “Now, David, have you got those nets ready?” As more people filed in, Travis and Nyssa finished setting up the lesson: how to set and spring a net. Travis began warming up for mock combat while Nyssa explained the newest type of net Cabin Nine had made. 

“Now, there’s four pieces connected by string. You drop them down as you go, one by one, then you press the button here-” Nyssa motioned to a fifth part of the net- a remote attached by a wire. -”And the pieces come together. Travis, let’s demonstrate!”

“Okay. You set the trap, I’ll be the opponent.” Travis said, slipping the remote into 

his pocket. Travis brought out the daggers he fought with and started to parry Nyssa’s Celestial bronze chainsaw thrusts and minor explosives. Finally, he got to the spot where he knew Nyssa had sprung the trap. Travis could barely contain his grin when Nyssa reached confidently for the remote, only to find that there was nothing there. As realisation dawned on Nyssa’s face, Travis jumped up. 

Allright, he thought. Time for trick number two. Travis’s beat-up red sneakers suddenly unfurled a set of wings each, the type that might belong to an exotic parrot. Gleefully treading the air five feet off the ground, Travis lunged at Nyssa and, despite being a good fifty pounds lighter than the muscular daughter of Hephaestus, managed to push her into her own trap. Travis pushed the button, and whooped as Nyssa was snatched up by her own net. 

“Outsmarted again, baby!” Travis cheered, and walked over to the net. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched a few coins change hands. Nyssa, however, was less pleased. 

“Trav! I told you, no funny business! Please, just this once, don’t plan to sabotage my 

demonstrations.” Nyssa scowled, her arms crossed. 

“Oh, believe me, if I had something planned, you would have been covered in raw eggs 

and flour by now. I just thought that everyone’s spirits could use a little lifting.” Travis clambered around the netted pile of Nyssa on the ground, and found the release switch. 

“Sure, But you’re in charge of all the practical stuff. You know, the trip wires and small pits and faux-pas arrows, remember? That was the deal to get you out of kitchen duty.”

“Well, what’s more practical than using what’s laying around?” Travis said. Though Nyssa huffed, she then admitted to the class that Travis had won the sparring session fair and square, and the two of them began getting to work with individual students. Travis’s first student was a little daughter of Athena named Soph. She couldn’t have been more than ten, but she had the same eyes as Annabeth the cabin head and his brother’s boyfriend, Malcolm. Travis thought that she fought pretty well, especially for a ten-year-old with something as large as her cavalry sword, but he still put one of his daggers in his belt and went a bit easy on her. Suddenly, he heard a loud crash. Much louder than the usual clicks and clangs of the training grounds. When Travis turned around, he saw that a glowing orb of canary-colored light about ten feet wide had taken up the center of the training browns, and that everyone was shying away from it. 

“Hey!” Out of panic, Travis motioned for his parrot-winged shoes to fly into the air, and jumped over the heads of his students to get to the orb. When he landed, a split second later, he saw that Nyssa was on the other side of it.

“Do you know what this is?” He asked. Nysse just shook her head.. Gradually, the light died down, and revealed… a lyre. It was made of simple brown wood, and looked much like the one Travis’s half-sister and cabin mate Stella played. 

“What could this mean?” Nyssa asked. She looked over at Travis, who was just as puzzled as he was. 

“A godly thing, maybe?” Travis and Nyssa stood, staring at the lyre.

“What is the meaning of this?” When Travis heard Chiron’s voice, he was so startled he jumped a little bit. Travis turned around, and saw that the centaur was standing there, along with Connor (thank the gods), Will, Rachel, and, for some reason, Drew from Cabin Ten. Connor rushed forward.

Travis said, “We were just teaching Traps in FIghting and there was this glowing ball of light, and now it’s gone and there’s a wooden lyre!” The words came rushing out of him. 

“And that would be all?” Chiron asked, his tail swishing like a nervous pendulum. 

“Yeah.” Nyssa said from next to him. In a smaller voice, she added, “please let it not be an ill omen. We have enough of those already.” The two of them, as well as their students, answered Chiron’s questions about the lyre, and then they left to round up a cabin heads’ meeting. 

Connor came over to Travis. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know.” Travis was thankful for the help; while Travis had always been the more outgoing of the two and the brains behind most of their pranks, Connor was more level-headed and thoughtful, which could really pay off when, say, a mysterious lyre showed up in camp. Or even when their half-brother turned out to be a traitor, and then dead, but they didn’t talk about that anymore. “One moment I was teaching this girl how to set a trip wire, the next, bam! Glowing orb, then little wooden instrument.”

“A lyre, huh? what could that signify? Apollo, maybe? Or the muse Euterpe? Or... there’s a chance that it’s Hermes.”

“Dad? Why?”

“He invented the lyre. It’s not really one of his symbols, but there’s still a connection.” Connor said. 

“Where’d you learn that?”

“Malcom.” Connor said, and Travis simply nodded. Recently, his brother had been taking an interest in the little tidbits of mythology that Connor’s boyfriend threw out. 

“Well, what do you think it is? I mean, if it was really Hermes, he’d do another pair of winged shoes, don’t you think? He likes useful things- thinks it encourages healthy in-stealing between siblings.” Travis looked down at his own winged shoes, which he had gotten at age thirteen using that exact method. 

“Maybe. Apollo would be a good guess, especially with the orb appearance.” Connor said. “So, what happens now?”

“Maybe you return my contacts?”

“Ooh, never.” Connor laughed. Twenty minutes later, Travis, who had found his contacts in the Hera cabin, sat in the Big House with the rest of the cabin heads, Nyssa, who had been sent as representative again, Grover, Chiron, Mr. D, and Rachel. 

“Campers!” As usual, Mr. D called the table to order. Just for fun, Travis did his worst impression of a jaunty army salute, but thankfully Mr. D paid it no attention. He noticed that Katie was among those who giggled at it, though. She was so cute, with that mop of curly hair that she always wore behind a bandanna, and the way she actually pulled off overalls. 

Nope. No. Bad Travis, he told himself, and then laughed at the absurdity of it. Seriously though, he needed to stop crushing on Katie, with her stupid beautiful brown eyes and… nope. Nevermind. Travis forced himself to concentrate while Mr. D explained the lyre situation, and filled in alongside Nyssa when prompted. To be honest, Travis missed most of it, as he, Connor, and Butch from the Iris cabin were trying to see who could swipe the pencil from behind Annabeth’s ear. Travis felt a bit sorry for her, with Percy gone and all, but the best way to cheer her up was just normal camp things, which involved a snickering Travis pulling a bright green mechanical pencil from behind Annabeth’s ear. At least his stupid Hermes kid kleptomaniac tendencies paid off sometimes; he now had a one-hundred-percent genuine number two pencil. Yeah, totally worth going to therapy, then lying to the therapist to try and hide being a demigod for. 

Travis only began paying attention when the story was over, and they had to decide what to do with the musical instrument on their hands. 

“There’s no clear message to it! How are we supposed to know what to do if there’s just this mysterious thing on the table! No instructions!” Next to Travis, Annabeth tugged at her hair. “If there was even some cryptic prophecy thing, but the last thing we need is to launch two quests a week apart. Because Jason, Piper, and Leo left two days ago now.”

“This could be about their quest.” Will spoke up. He seemed calm, but a bit tired as always. Poor Will always overworked himself, everyone knew. 

“Or, it could be about Percy.” Travis had known this was coming, but he had expected it to be from Annabeth, not Clarisse. Annabeth was practically that close to seeing Percy in her mashed potatoes during lunch. 

“Clarisse, what makes you think that?” Chiron asked. He looked haggard and worried, Travis noticed. No doubt he had been working twice as hard as usual, what with Percy’s disappearance and Jason's mysterious backstory-Romanized view-amnesia combo. 

“Oh, I don’t really know. And none of us know anything about it. This could be a joke from a nymph!”

Grover cleared his throat. “The amount of nature spirits needing to work together to produce a scent of magic half as strong as that would cover the whole island. No, I think that this is a cry for help.”

“How do you know that?” Someone shouted out.

“Because,” a voice came from behind Travis. He turned around, and saw Nico di Angelo coming out of the shadows behind his armchair, “Hestia is missing.”


End file.
